Presumed mammoth tusk is actually a whale jawbone

SANTA CRUZ ISLAND, Calif. 
Scientists digging off the Southern California coast say remains thought to be a mammoth tusk turned out to be a whale bone.

Earlier this month, a graduate student photographed what some thought was a complete tusk of a prehistoric pygmy mammoth on Santa Cruz Island.

A team of researchers spent two days on the island excavating and determined it was a jawbone from an extinct whale species.

Lotus Vermeer of the Nature Conservancy, who was on the trip, said the bone was found in a rock formation estimated to be between 9.5 million to 25 million years old – long before mammoth roamed the Channel Islands.